More recently, Bagram has been used as a launchpad for the military to leave Afghanistan. Hundreds of C-17 flights have removed U.S. equipment and weapons in recent weeks, many of them flying from Bagram. Other equipment was destroyed there.
Army Col. Sonny Leggett, a U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan, said on Friday in a statement that the transfer of Bagram to the government of Afghanistan “was an extensive process spanning several weeks,” beginning soon after President Biden directed in April the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“All handovers of Resolute Support bases and facilities, to include Bagram Airfield, have been closely coordinated, both with senior leaders from the government and with our Afghan partners in the security forces, including leadership of the locally based units respective to each base,” Leggett said.
The Bagram district governor, Darwish Raufi, expressed irritation with not being included in the process. He said in a statement that the U.S. military left “without coordinating with security and defense forces and in general without coordinating" with the Afghan government and officials in Bagram district.
“Some looters went in, some of them were arrested and some others escaped,” the governor said. “They were in for equipment that they could carry. They have stolen some carriable equipment.”
Fawad Aman, an Afghan defense ministry spokesman, said in a tweet that Bagram was handed over to the “ANDSF,” an acronym for Afghan National Defense and Security Forces.
“ANDSF will protect base and use it to combat terrorism,” he said.
A defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that Army Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan for nearly three years, remains in charge and retains the ability to protect U.S. troops if required as the withdrawal continues.
Miller met with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Friday to discuss how the United States and Afghan government will cooperate after the withdrawal is complete, according to a statement released by the Afghan presidential palace. Miller is expected to depart Afghanistan soon.
A one-star Navy SEAL officer, Rear Adm. Peter Vasely, is expected to become the senior U.S. military officer in Kabul, overseeing a smaller American security mission and reporting to Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, the chief of U.S. Central Command, the defense official said. That decision was first reported by the New York Times.
The departure from Bagram, first reported by Fox News, carries cultural significance for tens of thousands of troops who cycled through Bagram, some year after year. Initially an airport in the 1950s, it was seized by the Soviet Union in 1979 after it invaded Afghanistan, built up during the nearly 10-year Soviet occupation of the country, and taken over by the United States in late 2001, after the United States invaded Afghanistan following the September 2001 terrorist attacks.
Bagram, overlooked by the rugged, snow capped Hindu Kush mountains, also was the spot at which many U.S. troops killed in combat left the country. “Ramp ceremonies,” in which fellow service members drape a deceased service member’s remains in a U.S. flag, were a common sight there at the height of the U.S. war. A camp at Bagram was named after Senior Airman Jason Cunningham, one of the first U.S. military fatalities in the war.
The departure from the air base has renewed concerns among lawmakers, veterans and analysts who believe the U.S. military should not depart from Afghanistan completely.
Rep. Michael Waltz (R.-Fla.), a retired Special Forces officer, called the base “by far the biggest symbol of our 20 years of blood and treasure we have expended for all veterans that have served there.”
“As our only base sandwiched between China Russia and Iran it’s a huge strategic asset,” Waltz said. “Why are we just giving it away?”
Mick Mulroy, a former CIA paramilitary officer and Pentagon official early in the Trump administration, said that the speed of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan “may be a testament to the logistical capabilities of our force, but it also is not allowing for a buffer to see if the Afghan security forces will hold against the Taliban without our direct support.”
Close air support and casualty evacuation from Bagram were critical enablers in the war, said Mulroy, now an ABC News analyst.
“These enablers are often the deciding factor in engagements between our Afghan military and security partners and the Taliban. Engagements that will inevitably become more frequent once a complete US withdrawal happens,” Mulroy said.
U.S. officials briefly discussed keeping Bagram open longer, as the Taliban continues an offensive that has encircled numerous provincial capitals. But the Biden administration decided to continue with its plan, defense officials said.
Lawmakers asked senior Pentagon officials during a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week whether it would be possible to keep control of Bagram air base. Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, responded that “it is not necessary for the United States to stay at Bagram for what we’re going to try to do here with Afghanistan.”
Eighty-one of about 419 district centers in Afghanistan have fallen under Taliban control, Milley said; others are contested by the militants. Sixty percent of the districts under Taliban control fell to the insurgents last year, and the rest fell in the past few months, the general added.
“The security situation is not good,” Miller said.
More than 2,400 U.S. troops have been killed in 20 years of fighting, and 20,000 more have been wounded. About 47,245 civilians also have been killed, along with tens of thousands of members of Afghan security forces, according to United Nations assessments.
Biden administration officials have said that the United States will launch strikes in Afghanistan if there is evidence of a threat against the United States. Such an arrangement would focus on terrorist groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, which are believed to pose a threat outside Afghanistan, rather than the Taliban, which is focused on taking over the country.
Missy Ryan in Washington and Pamela Constable and Ezzatullah Mehrdad in Kabul contributed to this report.
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